


What Even Is A Soul, Anyway?

by YetAnotherPersona



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Flowey (Undertale) Redemption, Gen, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route - "I want to stay with you.", Undertale Monsters on the Surface
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2019-10-09 17:19:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17411054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YetAnotherPersona/pseuds/YetAnotherPersona
Summary: Everyone deserves a happy ending, so Frisk goes back into the underground to bring back everyone's favourite grumpy flower. Features soul-baring conversations, post-pacifist politics, and the constant looming threat of everything everyone worked so hard for being erased. Fun!





	1. Prologue - SAVE

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [UT - Flowey Origins](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/448955) by LynxGriffin. 



> I hope you enjoy this story - it's my first serious fanfic project.
> 
> I've given it a teen-plus rating for some fairly heavy subject matter, but overall I've tried to match the tone of the game. If you got through the main routes of Undertale okay, you won't find this story unbearably dark or disturbing. Thanks for reading!

You leave behind the gloom of your menu, and blink to clear the purple splotches in your vision as your eyes adjust to the light. You’re halfway up Mount Ebott, and the trees are too sparse to filter out much of the early afternoon sun. Within a couple of hours it will sink behind the mountain and cast the entire eastern side into shade, but right now it’s poised directly above the peak. From your position it’s as if the mountain is a huge arrow, pointing at the sun and saying _“Look at that! Isn’t it remarkable? Isn’t it amazing, to live every day in the open air under a bright sun?”_

It _is_ amazing. Since your fall into the underground, you’ve been careful to appreciate the more pedestrian aspects of surface life. Seasons, fresh air, sunlight; there were lots of things that you took for granted back then. Even the few days you spent trapped under the mountain were enough to begin wearing away at your mind. You can’t begin to imagine spending a lifetime there. Having grandparents who had never seen a sunrise, and knowing your grandchildren wouldn’t either.

And you could make it happen. The menu you just exited is an uncomfortable reminder of the power that you alone hold. “ _SAVE.” “LOAD.” “RESET.”_ That last one is the worst, five glowing amber letters that always come back to haunt you. Before today you hadn’t called up the menu in nearly a year, and you’d almost convinced yourself that the power had deserted you when you left the underground – that you could return to your life unburdened by the weight of such choices. But here, at the mouth of the cave where your journey began, the familiar sensations come creeping back. The grim resolve that you had to rely on to survive your journey. The willpower to face insurmountable odds, fail, and try again. With the memories comes the menu, and the confirmation that, no matter how little you desire it, you possess the power to snatch away everyone’s happy ending as completely as if it had never existed. You don’t have to use the power, but you can never be rid of it.

You’re filled with determination.


	2. Flowey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frisk pays a surprise visit to an old acquaintance, and later receives one in turn.

There’s a sturdy-looking tree growing a few yards from the mouth of the cave. You clip the climbing rope around it and pull it taut, leaning back so that it bears your full weight. The tree doesn’t budge.

You fasten the climbing harness around your torso, don the bright orange helmet, and gradually lower yourself into the Ruins. You reach the ground and have just finished unclipping your harness when you hear a familiar voice, high pitched and laced with derision. Flowey has noticed your arrival.

“Frisk? What are you _doing_ here? I told you –ʺ He pauses, and a malevolent smile creeps onto his face. “Oh, you’re back to reset, right? I knew eventually you’d... wait, what?” his voice trails off when he sees the trowel and flowerpot you’ve just unpacked, and his expression goes from smug to scornful. “You _idiot!_ Don’t you remember what I said?! I can’t love you. I can’t love anyone. I’ll just make you all miserable up there.”

You kneel down in front of him. “I know that you can’t love. It’s okay.”

“Then... what? Is this some kind of pity thing?” He puts on a sing-song voice “’Oh, boo hoo, the poor flower’s left all alone?’ Because you can keep your worthless pity.”

“No, that’s not it.”

“Then what is it?!”

“It’s just... you’re the only other one who knows what it was like,” you say. “Being able to save, and reset, and all that stuff. I wasn’t exactly responsible with that power, and I can’t vent to the others about it. Not after what I did. I just wanted someone to talk to about it, and I thought you might want that, too.” You pause to let Flowey respond, but he doesn’t say anything so you carry on. “I know you’re not interested in being friends, or, or family, with anyone, and... I know that I’m not Chara. But do you think maybe understanding would be enough?”

Flowey doesn’t talk or meet your gaze for several seconds. He seems to be actually considering what you’ve said, which is more than you’d hoped for. Finally, he mumbles “Yeah. Sure. Whatever.” As you start digging into the earth around him, he adds “On a couple of conditions. Don’t tell Asgore and Toriel who I am.”

“I won’t tell.”

“And no more resets.”

“No more resets,” you echo in affirmation. You transfer Flowey into the pot and fasten it onto your back in silence. You get the feeling he’s waiting for you to say something sentimental so that he can rib you for it. You decide to hold your tongue; he’ll probably find something to be rude about if you give him a moment. You adjust the backpack straps, walk back to the rope, and begin your ascent.

 “What’s with this stupid helmet, anyway?” asks Flowey. There it is.

“Toriel wouldn’t let me come down here without safety stuff.”

“You look like a total dork.”

“Uh-huh. I know.” The insult is so mild you don’t really feel it. And anyway, it’s basically just background noise coming from him. The remainder of your climb to the surface passes in silence; you can feel the awkwardness of Flowey’s failed needling hanging in the air. You’ve made it to the mouth of the cave and are winding up the rope when he pipes up again.

“That’s so like her, though.”

“What is?”

“The helmet. If you fell from this height, you probably wouldn’t land on your head...”

“I see – “

“...and even if you did, the impact would just carry through anyway and break your neck. I tested it out, in one reset. Drops from different heights. Figuring out what a monster can survive.”

“Uh-huh.” You know he just wants a reaction, but that doesn’t make it any less unsettling.

“Human bodies are tougher, granted, but that probably wouldn’t make much difference. But of course she sends you out with a helmet, anyway. She’s so obsessed with trying to protect people, even when it’s out of her control. Even when it doesn’t concern her! Imprisoning random humans just to feel like she’s doing some good. Ha.”

You trudge back down the mountain in silence. He’ll wear himself out soon enough.

“It’s guilt, I suppose.” He leans over from his position on your back, hissing the words into your ear. “She failed so monumentally to protect her _real_ son, and serve her _actual_ subjects, and she’s trying to make up for it now. That’s all you are. The latest subject for another study in self-pity. How long has she even known you, like, a few months? And yet she wants to act like your _Mother,_ who _cares_ for you and _supports_ you. And just watch: if you try to move on, or grow up, she’ll resent you for it. She’ll guilt-trip you until –“

“Asriel. Shut up, now.”

Flowey shuts up. But after a few seconds, he mumbles, “Why did you call me that?”

“Because it’s still your name. Like it or not, you’re still her son, and you’re still the Prince of monsters. And you need to act like it.” You know you shouldn’t be rising to his bait, but you can’t help yourself.

“I don’t ‘need’ to act like anything. As far as Toriel knows I’m dead, and as for being the Prince of monsters, that ship has sailed. Still, if hearing the truth about her upsets you so, I’ll stop. You’ll see it for yourself eventually.”

“Sure,” you say. The sun is obscured by the mountain now, so the rest of your descent is in shade. The western sky behind you is a luminous orange, but ahead it’s already fading into turquoise. The trees are denser this close to the bottom of Mt Ebott, and a chorus of evening birdsong gradually builds up as the ground levels out. Here you pause for a quick rest before starting the final leg of your journey.

You put down the backpack for a moment and take a swig from your canteen before waving it in Flowey’s direction. “You, uh, want any?”

“Sure,” he says. “Just, like, pour some into the pot... if that’s cool. And don’t laugh about it.”

“I wasn’t going to,” you assure him. You empty about a cup’s worth of water into the soil, trying to distribute it evenly. Watering a sentient plant isn’t a particularly weird interaction where monsters are concerned.

“So what’s been going on in the outside world? Since I busted everyone out, I mean?” Flowey asks.

 “Well, let’s see. Asgore’s been negotiating with various human governments to try and sort out the position of monsters in the world. On the one hand the monsters want him to stay king, but it’s not really clear where he’s going to be king of. America – that’s the human country that exists here now – doesn’t want to give up all the land around Ebott. They can’t really ask all the humans to leave, but relocating all the monsters somewhere else would take a long time. There’s a whole bunch more complicated stuff I don’t really get. But at least it looks like there won’t be another war.”

“I was wondering why there were still so many monsters in the underground,” says Flowey. “So I freed everyone, and they have to stay under the mountain anyway? That’s just peachy.”

“Kinda. Yellow Creek (that’s the human town we’re heading for) is being expanded with temporary housing, and monsters are moving in. But that all had to be agreed with the human authorities, and then planned out, before the actual building could start. And there’s a lot of monsters, way more than the town can hold at the moment.”

“Huh.”

“Papyrus is helping out with relocating monsters. Toriel’s started a school so the kids can carry on learning. I don’t know if you know Mettaton? He’s been a real hit with humanity. Already got a world tour planned.”

“That sounds about right for him.”

“Anyone else you want to know about?”

“Hmm... what’s up with Sans these days?”

“I don’t see much of him. I kind of prefer it that way, to be honest.”

“Good call. It was always a pain when he tracked me down.”

“I feel like he must know about all my resets. But if he does, he hasn’t let on, and I don’t exactly want to bring it up with him.”

“Sure.”

“It’s getting dark,” you say. You finish your water and carefully lift the backpack over your shoulders. “We’d better get home before Toriel starts worrying.”

Flowey sighs. “Uh-huh. So where am I actually staying, anyway?”

*             *             *

The greenhouse sits against the fence at the end of your back garden, underneath a tall pine tree. It's been specially built to make sure Flowey doesn’t pose a threat to himself or anyone else. The panels are made of the same magically-reinforced glass that was used to build the Core, meaning it’s strong enough to withstand magical attacks from Undyne and Toriel simultaneously (they tested it to be sure). As for Flowey's ability to burrow underground, the similarly toughened metal grate above the floor should prevent that. It took a lot of pestering and pleading to convince Toriel to have it built (“I don’t know _why_ you want to go to all this effort to look after such an unpleasant creature, Frisk.”) but you got your way in the end. The door is fitted with a heavy metal lock as an extra security measure.

Flowey threw one of his customary tantrums over these new lodgings, calling them humiliating and disrespectful, as well as lamenting how little faith you all had in his better nature. But everyone agreed he couldn’t really be set loose on the world in his current state, especially with the peace between humankind and monsters as tenuous as it was.

You’ve tried to make the greenhouse as pleasant as you can. A small square table in the centre holds Flowey's pot, and there are a couple of garden chairs around it for visitors to sit in. You set up an old TV against one wall by threading an extension cord out of the window and into the house, so he at least has something for entertainment. It's voice controlled, meaning he can surf channels to his heart’s content without needing the remote. You also brought him a couple of boxes of books from Toriel’s collection – stories, natural history, puzzles – but it soon became apparent that his magic was much better suited to punching holes through the pages than turning them. Lastly, you assured him that you would visit him every day (“Golly, what fun,” he responded).

Once you’ve finished installing Flowey in his new home, you head back inside. You consider inviting him in for dinner, but after hearing what he has to say about Toriel you decide against it. You weren’t even sure he’d agree to come to the surface, and you’re not going to push your luck by forcing him to socialise. Once he’s had a bit of time to adjust to being around other people, everything will get better. In the meantime, though, you have to admit it’s a pretty dull situation you’ve left him in.

He will get better, won’t he? When you compare Flowey as he is now to the kid who freed monsters from the underground, you can barely wrap your mind around the fact that they’re the same person. There must be some missing ingredient – what is it about a soul that can so drastically change someone’s personality. When he only had human souls he wasn’t much different from his soulless self... it was the monster souls that did it. Those souls weren’t really _his..._ but they did seem to let him express his own emotions. So there has to be something you can do...

Dinner tonight is a kind of root vegetable medley with tomato sauce, but your mind is too busy chasing itself in circles to give it the admiration it deserves. Toriel can tell something is up. “Are you alright, Frisk? You look very... distant.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve just had a long day.” That’s not a lie; your hike has left you pretty exhausted.

“I hope that Flowey chap hasn’t given you too much trouble. I must admit, I’m surprised you wanted to have anything to do with him, given how he attacked us all back in the underground.”

“Yeah, well, you know...” you stumble over your words, trying to phrase your response so as not to give anything away. “Like I said, it felt like a risk just leaving him out there.”

“I suppose so...”

“And I actually talked to him quite a lot... when I was in the underground, I mean. And it seems like he might not be so bad. I think he just needs someone who understands him.”

Toriel sighs. “The thing is, Frisk, you are an extremely selfless person, and also very persistent. And that can be a good thing! You managed to convince monsters who’d spent their whole lives preparing to kill humans to spare you, and even be friends with you. You even talked Asgore out of waging war on humanity, which, well...” she falters. “What I mean is, you seem to have a knack for bringing out the best in people. But you need to be careful to look after yourself, as well. From what I’ve seen of that creature, he’s very fond of degrading other people, and you’ll make yourself an easy target if you open up to him too much.” You open your mouth to respond, but she forges ahead. “Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t try to help him. I’ve underestimated you before. But I want you to promise me that you won’t let him tear you down, and you won’t take it too much to heart if he proves, well... un-befriend-able.” When you don’t answer, she repeats herself. “Can you promise me that, Frisk?”

You put on a smile. “Sure, Toriel. I won’t let him get to me.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Now, do you want some more dinner, or shall we move on to dessert?”

“Dessert sounds good.”

It’s weird hearing Toriel criticise her own son so frankly – what she’s saying is totally fair, but still. You wish you could just tell her who Flowey is, but you did agree not to, and breaking a promise within a few hours of making it is not a good look.

The rest of the evening passes without incident, but once you get into bed you feel restless in spite of your physical exertion. You reach for your phone and load up an episode of anime. Something with a nice, low-stakes conflict and a happy ending. Your brain needs it right now.

*             *             *

You’re in the hallway of the castle in New Home, fighting Sans. You’ve lost count of how many times you’ve died to him, but it must already be more than ten. You’re not sure while you’re still coming back – it’s pretty clear he’s impossible to beat.

Sans’s turn. _“seeing what comes next... i can’t afford not to care anymore.”_ You don’t know or care what that means, and he doesn’t give you time to ponder it. A series of attacks from either side forces you to dodge wildly around the hallway; one of them grazes you and knocks off a handful more HP. Only a few rounds into the fight, and you’re already dangerously injured. You grunt in frustration.

Your turn. FIGHT. You lunge at Sans with your dagger, and he dodges. Big surprise.

Sans’s turn. _“ugh... that being said... you, uh, really like swinging that thing around, huh?”_

Oh, right. You hadn’t realised it was already time for him to plead.

 _“listen. friendship...”_ he says. You let your eyes glaze over. His next line is accompanied by a wink. _“it’s really great, right? let’s quit fighting.”_ The plus side to fighting an opponent who knows about your power is that he doesn’t bore you with the same dialogue every time. He knows you’ve both been here before, and that offering you mercy is essentially a formality. Short and sweet. You can respect that. You’ll take the opportunity to heal up, then get back to the fighting.

Your turn. Sans is sparing you.

You bite into a Legendary Hero. Mettaton may have been a crummy fighter, but there’s no denying he could make a mean sandwich. You eat another to max out your HP. Fantastic. Time to kill the skeleton. Then again...

Sans is sparing you.

You consult the MERCY menu, just out of interest. His name is yellow. Huh. So it’s not just an empty gesture – he really is giving you a second chance. You look at him again. He stands there, hands in his pockets, the usual inscrutable grin on his face, and sweat (for some reason) dripping down his brow. It’s kind of touching, you have to admit, especially after everything you’ve done. Still, you only have one goal in mind, and accomplishing it means rejecting his offer. You’ll just head over to FIGHT, and...

Sans is sparing you.

Ugh, FINE. You’ll spare him, just this once. This fight was just going to end with you dying, anyway – you’ve blown through your healing items way too soon to have a chance later on. You’ll spare him, see how he reacts, and then you can reload your SAVE and finish the job. It’s no biggie.

Your turn. MERCY. Spare.

Sans’s turn. He closes his eyes, and you think you can detect genuine relief on his face. _“you’re sparing me? finally. buddy. pal. i know how hard it must be... to make that choice. to go back on everything you’ve worked up to.”_ He already looks so much less tense. It could almost warm your heart, under different circumstances. _“i want you to know...”_ he continues, _“i won’t let it go to waste.”_

With those words, he looks right into your eyes. You’re torn between sentimentality over how nice he’s being, and disgust at how easily he gave up the fight. When you reload and kill him, you’ll make sure to taunt him about that.

 _“cm’ere, pal.”_ He opens his arms, offering you a hug. You move forward to accept. It can’t hurt to play his game for a minute or two longer.

His attack hits you dead on. By the time you can react, there’s nowhere to run. Your HP drains to zero in seconds, and the last thing you see before blacking out is his face, flashing you one last infuriating wink.

_“geeettttttt dunked on!!! if we’re really friends... you won’t come back.”_

Okay, he got you good. As you load up your save again, you have to wonder why you’re even doing this. Sure, pacifism proved to be a no-go, and you’re curious to see what happens when you kill everyone, but is it really worth dying to Sans over and over again? In fact, you’re pretty sure you already gave up on this path and reset. And didn’t you free everyone from the underground months ago? so why are you...?

Oh, right, you’re dreaming. Very funny, brain.

You gradually open your eyes and squint at the digital alarm clock. Your eyes adjust to the dark just in time to watch the display roll over from _23:59_ to _00:00 –_ still hours until it’s worth getting up. You’re about to try and go back to sleep, but you suddenly get the feeling you’re not alone. Now that you’ve noticed it, you can definitely sense a familiar presence watching you.

“Hi, Frisk,” says Chara. “It’s been a while.”

“What do you want?” You say it in a monotone, more like a statement than a question.

“Wow, what’s with the tone? I’m trying to be polite here.”

“I thought you were gone.”

“Gone? Nah, I’ll be sticking around for a while yet. You’re so full of surprises. I never know what you’re gonna do next!”

You turn over and close your eyes, but Chara doesn’t take the hint.

“Case in point,” they continue. “You wimp out of fighting Sans because he’s too tough for you, but now you want to try and save Asriel?”

You grunt in annoyance. “So I take it you chose the dream.”

“I’m not the boss of your subconscious... but I was thinking about that battle, yes – the one where the skeleton man pranked you so hard you had to reset the timeline. Anyway, as I was saying: you can’t fix Asriel. It’s literally impossible, and you should give up.”

You sit up and glare at Chara. It’s not like blocking them out was working, anyway. “You don’t know that.”

“Oh, please. His soul vanished when he died. Poof! Gone. That crazy Doctor brought back his consciousness, but he’s empty inside and you know it. Face it, Frisk, you can’t give everyone a happy ending.”

“I can at least try!”

Chara gives an exaggerated sigh. “Fine. If you want to waste your effort on this dead end of a timeline, be my guest. But you’ll get bored. And when you do, just remember the path you were too much of a coward to finish.”

Your room fades into darkness around you, and suddenly the menu is looming before your face once again. The bright orange words fill your vision, and follow you even when you turn away. Even when you close your eyes. “ _SAVE.” “LOAD.” “RESET.”_ Chara whispers three more words into your ear before they vanish.

“I’ll be waiting.”

You try to scramble away and trip in the darkness. There’s no floor, so you fall and fall until you finally wake with a jolt.

You sit up and look around. You swallow your panic and try to figure out if you’re really awake this time. You don’t hear Chara’s voice, and the menu is gone – both good signs. A thin strip of sunlight is showing between the curtains and cutting diagonally across your bed. Your dressing gown is hung on the door like it always is. The alarm clock reads _09:17,_ thirteen minutes before it’s set to go off. You sigh and relax. Everything is normal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter reiterates the dialogue from the final pages of the comic which inspired it. I chose to write it that way to make the beginning less jarring and provide context for what comes next. However, I still highly recommend you give the comic a read, as it's an excellent work in its own right.


	3. Pie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frisk brings Flowey an olive branch of sorts.

After that dream you feel no desire to go back to sleep any time soon, so you’re glad it’s about getting-up time. By the time you’ve got dressed and dragged the brush through your hair, the details of what happened are already fading, leaving you with fragments – images and emotions, but nothing concrete. The fight with Sans... you feel like that part matched up pretty closely with the real thing. But the bit with Chara was completely new. You struggle to reconstruct the scene – Chara’s voice was talking to you, like it did months ago in the underground. They were angry; trying to make you do something... change something. Lines of conversation trickle out of your mind as you try to catch them.

You sigh in frustration. It felt real, but then all dreams do at the time. You must be overreacting because of the stress. After all, if Chara really was back, why would they be confined to your dreams? That was never how it worked before, and there’s no reason it should change now. The thought comforts you. You left Chara behind in the underground. The dream was just a dream. No need to read into it.

Your alarm clock goes off on your bedside table, and you tap the button to silence it. As you leave your room, you glance in the mirror. Yeah. It’s just you.

As you head down the hall towards the kitchen, you hear the sounds of baking – the whirring of the oven and the occasional clatter of dishes. Sure enough, when you enter you find Toriel carefully taking two circular glass dishes out of the oven. Each one contains an empty pie crust, lined with rice-filled baking paper. Bowls of filling sit on the counter – one a rich brown, the other dark red.

“Oh, good morning, Frisk,” she says. “You’re up a bit earlier than usual.”

“Yeah. I woke up before my alarm for some reason. What’s the occasion?” You gesture to the pies.

“I thought since it’s only a week until Spring break, I would bring in a treat for the children at school.” She sets aside the baking paper and rice, and then pours the brown mixture carefully into one of the dishes. “And, since I was already making one pie, I thought I might as well do another just for us to have at home. One will be cherry, the other one will be cinnamon-butterscotch.”

“The classic,” you nod. An idea comes into your head.

“I haven’t decided which to take in and which to keep yet, though,” she says. “Which would you prefer? Oh, and can you fetch me the spatula from the drawer on the left?”

You retrieve the spatula and hand it over. “Can we hang onto the cinnamon and butterscotch one? It’s my favourite.”

“Thank you, dear, and of course!” Toriel pours as much of the cherry filling into the second pie as will go, and scrapes the rest out with the spatula. “I thought you might pick that one; it was always a family favourite.”

A family favourite – that’s what you’re counting on. You make yourself some jam on toast for breakfast while Toriel puts the pies in the oven and sets the old-fashioned cooking timer.

“There we go. They ought to be ready in forty minutes,” she says.

You busy yourself with math homework at the living room table while you wait for the pies to be done. It’s fractions – not particularly hard, but not that interesting either. Still, by alternating bites of toast with questions you get through it in fairly good time. You go into the kitchen to check the timer – still ten minutes before the pies are done. You while the time away by doodling in the back of your math book.

You draw a column of circles, and use straight lines to split them into smaller and smaller pieces. The first one you split in half, and the second one you halve twice, making four quarters. Then you cut the next one into eighths. You notice that where you only needed one extra division to go from halves to quarters, you need two more after that to get eighths. You draw lines across the fourth circle until it looks about symmetrical, and count the slices: sixteen. They’re a bit unevenly sized when there’s so many. You try divide the next circle, following the pattern, but you’ve drawn it too small to cram in enough lines. You spot how the number of lines you need to draw doubles with each new circle, as does the number of slices. So the last one must have thirty-two slices. There get to be a lot of lines very fast after a few steps.

Bored of straight lines, you turn the circles into pies, adding crimped crusts around the edges and pastry lattices or sliced fruit on top. The first pie, in two halves, is the neatest. Two halves for two people – you and Toriel, you suppose. But you wouldn’t want to eat half a pie in one sitting. The quartered one underneath looks a bit more manageable. A quarter each for you, Toriel, and Flowey, and... who else? Asgore? You doubt Toriel would want to share a pie with him. Or with Flowey, for that matter. Perhaps the last two quarters are for Sans and Papyrus, or Undyne and Alphys. But if you give them to one pair, you’ll leave out the other. You’re not sure about that one.

The one in eight parts is easy. One each for you, Toriel, Sans, Papyrus, Undyne, Alphys, Flowey and Asgore. When you split it between more people, their individual conflicts don’t seem so important. As an added bonus, the slices are a size that you might actually want to eat. The sixteenths pie has enough slices for everyone in your class at school, though they’re rather modest in size, and as for the... thirty-twoths? Thirty-seconds? You wouldn’t even know who to give that many slices to. And that pie is a mess to look at, anyway.

The timer rings shrilly, and presently Toriel passes through into the kitchen to get the pies out. The delicious smells of cherry, cinnamon and butterscotch mix together and waft through into the living room. You abandon your drawings to go and look at the finished products.

“Well, I’d say those are done,” says Toriel, placing the pies on a wire rack on the counter. “I’ll leave them to cool now; and the butterscotch one will make a nice afternoon snack.”

“Um, is it alright if I take some now?” you ask.

“Are you sure? You only just had breakfast.”

“I know, but I thought I might take some out to offer to Flowey, as a sort of... good will gesture. Just a couple of small slices. Please?”

Toriel sniffs, but then her expression softens. “Alright then. Just don’t make yourself sick. And you’ll still need to wait a bit for it to set so you can cut it.”

*             *             *

Half an hour later you head to the greenhouse, a plate of pie in each hand. You know that Toriel made this recipe a lot back when he was alive and soulful, and you’re hoping it might have a positive effect on him. As you approach, you see that Flowey’s pot is empty and your heart misses a beat. You put the plates down on the ground and fumble to unlock the door. He emerges from the soil as you come in, and your panic recedes. You guess he prefers to bury himself when he’s alone? Sure, why not.

“And what time do you call this?” he asks grumpily, fixing you with a baleful stare.

“It’s almost eleven, Flowey. Not exactly the crack of dawn. Why does a flower even need sleep?”

“I dunno. I get sleepy. I don’t make the rules.”

“Whatever. Anyway, I brought you some breakfast.” You set one of the plates down in front of him, and take a seat in one of the garden chairs to eat your own pie.

He glances at the pie with disdain, and then looks back to you. “So what am I meant to do with this?”

“Uhm, like, eat it?”

“I’m a _flower,_ Frisk. I haven’t eaten food since before I died. What, you think I’ve got a whole digestive system packed into my stem?”

You pause with your mouth full. You realise you’d just sort of assumed that he could eat because he had a face, which, now that you think about it, does seem like a pretty dumb conclusion to draw. It’s especially mortifying to be having this conversation while you shovel a delicious slice of pie into your face. You try and fail to swallow inconspicuously, and can tell that Flowey is relishing the awkwardness of the situation.

You clear your throat. “So, like, don’t you get hungry?”

“Of course I get _hungry,_ Frisk. It helps that I’m lucky enough to still have a sense of smell in this form. It really is such fun being able to smell food but not eat it!”

“So how do you not starve?”

“I make food with my leaves, I think. It’s called phono... no, photo-something. I forget. Do human schools not have science classes?”

“No, we do. It’s photosynthesis, I think. Which makes sense, I guess. It just seems weird, you being able to talk and smell and stuff, but not eat.”

“Let me reiterate, Frisk: I don’t make the rules.”

“Yeah.” You put your plate down. “Sorry, Flowey, I didn’t realise. I probably shouldn’t eat right in front of you like this, huh?”

He looks taken aback for a moment, and then eyes you suspiciously. Whatever thought he’s having passes quickly, though, and he responds matter-of-factly. “In this case, I can’t say I mind that much. This pie honestly looks pretty gross.”

“Really? I got the impression it was a favourite of yours.” It sounds like he’s trying to provoke you again, so you choose your words with caution.

“It was. I remember really liking it, back before... everything. But come on. Butterscotch _and_ cinnamon? Plus all the extra sugar in the base? It’s not good, it’s just sweetness overload. I must have been a really dumb kid, I’m telling you.”

“Well personally, I like it,” you say. “Are you sure it’s not just because – “

“Not everything is about me lacking a _soul,_ Frisk!” _Now you’ve gone and done it_ , you think. “I can still have taste and judgement, even if I can’t feel emotions or whatever. And the truth is that this pie is just not that great. But hey, you’re entitled to your opinion. Even if it’s wrong.” He chuckles, and doesn’t say anything else.

Huh. That was much better than the diatribe you were gearing up for. “Well,” you say, getting up and retrieving the watering can from its corner. “I suppose I’ll just, uh... give you your water, then.” Flowey doesn’t respond. You sprinkle some water into the pot, just enough to hydrate the soil, and then put it back. “Do you want anything else?”

“I dunno,” he says. “Have you got any human TV show recommendations? I had a look yesterday, but there was way too much to choose from.”

“I mean, there’s cartoons and stuff, if you’re into that. Or news, if you’d prefer. I think Mettaton’s quiz show in on right now, too.”

“Nah, I got to see plenty of Mettaton in the underground. Let’s watch some news – see what the humans are up to. TV, switch on.”

The TV is an older model and a bit sluggish, but after a couple of seconds the screen lights up, showing the company logo.

“Go to news,” says Flowey.

A list of channel names appears. A chipper voice asks “Which news channel would you like to watch?”

“Whichever, I’m not bothered.” Flowey keeps his tone curt in defiance of the upbeat AI.

“Sorry, I didn’t get that. Which news ch-“

“Rrgh! Fine. First one.”

The image switches to show a human reporter at a desk. He’s midway through a report. You eat the rest of your pie as you watch.

“... on Friday announced that an agreement has been reached between the federal government, the state of Oregon, and the delegation representing monsters, led by Asgore Dreemurr. Until now, building was limited to the borders of local towns; the new deal opens up two thousand acres of state land in the Ebott region for developments to accommodate the population currently living under the mountain. The plan also allows monsters to apply for United States residence, so that they can travel freely in the country. The governor of Oregon supported this provision, saying that it will allow the monster population to spread to other areas, and alleviate the strain on the resources of what is a relatively remote area.”

The reporter fades away, being replaced by footage of a press conference. A human is at the microphone, answering a question from the crowd, but you can see the monster representatives standing behind her. Most of them are wearing suits to match the human politicians, but Asgore has stuck with his royal gold-and-purple robes, making him a jarring presence among all the neutral colours. The effect is compounded by the fact that he stands at least a foot taller than the tallest humans present.

Upon seeing Asgore, Flowey bursts out laughing. “Oh my God, he looks so stupid like that.” Detecting his speech, the TV lowers its volume so that you and Flowey can converse.

“I dunno,” you say. “There’s a very fine line between impressive and ridiculous, and I’d say right now he’s just about staying on the impressive side.”

“Maybe. But I don’t know why he thought the robes were a good idea.”

“He knows that he’s not going to blend in, and he’s owning it. I mean, he’d look even weirder in a suit.”

“Pfft. Yeah, you’re probably right. At least he’s taking it seriously. Back in the underground he always used to make a joke out of important ceremonies. It was so embarrassing.”

The narration continues, and returns to full volume after you and Flowey stop talking. “Several environmental pressure groups have spoken out against the plan, claiming that new buildings will damage the ecosystems of the Ebott region. Meanwhile, public opinion is divided on allowing monsters free movement across the country. Political commentator Rex Aardman had this to say in response to the proposal.”

The TV cuts to a clip of a man sitting in front of a microphone in an office. He speaks at a rapid pace, and although he’s not quite yelling, his tone is forceful. “Here’s the thing: these guys say they’ve been living underneath Mt Ebott perfectly fine for thousands of years. So what I don’t get is why they’ve decided to reveal themselves now, and why they think they’ve got a right to just swan in and set up camp in our backyard. Are they offering anything in exchange? No! Now, I don’t have any issue with them being in the country, but I think they should just stay put in the home they already have.”

 “I recognize this guy,” you say to Flowey, as Aardman’s monologue continues. “Mettaton argues with him a lot on Twitter.”

“Twitter?”

“It’s a human social media site. A bit like Undernet, but the posts are shorter.”

“Uh-huh. I kind of hate his guts. Does he not get that humans are the ones who sealed us underground in the first place? He must be really thick.”

“From what I’ve seen he doesn’t really ‘get’ things, he just talks about them. He’d probably say the barrier’s not his problem because he wasn’t alive when it was created. Luckily, most humans aren’t as bad. And hey, you’re not exactly...” you stop.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Flowey sighs. “You were going to say I’m not exactly one to talk. ‘Kill or be killed,’ and all that. I guess you’re right. But at least I’m that way because I’m physically incapable of compassion or whatever. What’s his excuse?”

You chuckle grimly. “Yeah. I can’t point fingers either; I did my fair share of killing when I got bored or frustrated. I reset it, but still.”

“You only reset that one time because you couldn’t beat Sans, though.”

“True. Still, I’m glad I did. I don’t think things would have ended well if I’d killed him.”

On the TV, the reporter has returned. “Mr Dreemurr concluded the Friday press conference by thanking the United States government and people for their cooperation and support. His delegation returned to the Ebott region this weekend to begin overseeing building works. Next up, the story of a banking data breach that saw five hundred thousand customers’ personal details stolen...”

“I have to ask,” says Flowey. “Why did you wait so long to bring me to the surface? It’s pretty clear I’m a glorified prisoner right now, so why was I free for all those months?”

“I’ve been having nightmares,” you say. “For a while after leaving the underground, I was okay. I think being busy trying to keep the peace between humans and monsters sort of kept my mind occupied. But as things calmed down, I started to really... think about everything that happened. All the killing I did, and all the times I died. And I couldn’t really tell anyone about it, because that would mean telling them I can reset time, and that’s a can of worms I just _really_ don’t want to open.”

“Understandable.”

You wonder if you should mention Chara’s reappearance, but decide against it. You know first-hand how obsessed he is with them; there’s no telling what he might do if he thought he could get to them through you. Besides, you’re ninety percent sure you were imagining the whole thing.

You carry on. “And after you destroyed the barrier, you went back to the ruins. When I talked to you there, you asked me to leave you, and go and live my life. So I didn’t want to come and disturb you.  That’s why I waited.”

“I guess that makes sense. But what about Asgore, and Undyne, and everyone else? I attacked them all when I stole the human souls; you’d think they’d want to do something about that sooner rather than later.”

“That’s the weird thing. When I talked to them about that fight – about everything leading up to the destruction of the barrier – it was like none of them remembered it until I brought it up. I can only assume really did a number on them when you, er, borrowed their souls. Anyway, I asked Asgore if I could bring you up to the surface, and he said it was fine, but that I had to make sure you wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone. He put Undyne in charge of securing you, and she and I designed the greenhouse together. Alphys helped, too.”

“Really? I’d wouldn’t have guessed this was an Undyne project. It’s not up to her usual standard of... deadliness.”

“I talked her out of a lava moat. Speaking of which, she’s coming over this afternoon to check that I’m sticking to the plan and not, like, letting you just go wherever.”

Flowey mulls this over for a bit, and then says “Wow, I’ve lost my edge.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I really did just let you pick me up and carry me into a prison. I’m not saying it’s a bad move on your part; I’d probably try and kill you all if I got free. But still, I can’t believe I let that happen. And I fancied myself as some sort of evil mastermind.”

“It won’t be forever. Asgore and Undyne will see that you’re okay now, at least compared to before. I’ll convince them to let you out eventually. In the meantime just try to keep a lid on the ‘kill you all’ stuff when they’re around. I mean, you had months of freedom where you could have been doing that, and you didn’t.”

“Yeah, well, you have exercise more care in your killing sprees once you lose the ability to save and load. Especially around humans; you know what happened last time a human village felt threatened by my presence.”

“Yeah. Ouch.”

You look at each other for a moment, and suddenly you’re both snorting with laughter. Joking about this kind of stuff feels weird, but it’s a welcome change from having to keep it all hidden inside your head.

The TV has moved on to a weather report which you watch in silence for a minute. The coming week will be mild and sunny, apparently, but then a pretty big storm will hit early the week after. _Right in time for Spring break,_ you think.

“Okay, turns out human news is even more boring than monster news,” says Flowey. “Let’s see some cartoons. I like cartoons.”

*             *             *

“So here’s why I don’t like cartoons,” he says, a couple of episodes into season one of Robo Starship Warriors (another Alphys recommendation, and one of the better ones in your opinion). “It’s because they’re not realistic at all.”

“Obviously they’re not realistic,” you say. “The whole point of a cartoon is to be different from real life. That’s what makes them fun.”

“It’s what makes them pointless.”

“Not true! A cartoon about a kid going to school and then coming home and eating dinner would be pointless. Cartoons let you forget all that boring stuff and watch other people have adventures.”

“Sure, they help you forget how boring your life is. But they’re just as predictable in their own way. A problem happens and some people fight, but then at the end of the episode the main guys always win, and their problems get solved with no consequences. Sometimes they argue with each other, but then they just hug, and then forget all about it in the next one.”

“So you don’t like it because of the happy endings?”

“Happy endings don’t exist, Ch – Frisk.” He hasn’t exactly been cheerful today, but now his voice has gained a worryingly bitter edge. “I thought I was making a happy ending when I freed monsters from the underground, but it’s been months since then and humans like that Rex guy are still trying to ruin it for them. Toriel decided to leave her exile, but she still hates Asgore, and always will. You brought me to the surface, but I still have to stay locked in a greenhouse because I’m too unstable to have a normal life...” he sounds like he might be about to cry, but he gulps and keeps going. “Sorry, sorry. Anyway, cartoons... they’re like butterscotch pie. They’re fun to consume, but they’re not actually very interesting or good, abjectively speaking. Abjectively? Is that the right word?”

You shrug.

“And if you expect all food to be that sweet, you’re just going to be disappointed. So yeah.” He steadies his breathing. “They’re not that great.”

You feel as though you should hug him, or put your hand on his shoulder or something. But as a flower he’s sorely lacking in the shoulder department. You settle for clumsily holding the rim of his pot.

“Maybe you’re right”, you say. “It’s true, you and Toriel and monsters haven’t had a happy ending yet. But none of your stories are over. There’s still time to make things better, or try to at least. No point cancelling the show halfway through.”

He laughs half-heartedly. “I guess.”

“And hey, when everything gets too much, there’s no harm in indulging in some bad TV shows, if it helps you relax.”

“Yeah. Starship Troopers isn’t really that bad, as cartoons go.”

That strikes you as a pretty weak compliment. But from Flowey, you’ll take it. You check the time on your phone, and are surprised to see it’s already past twelve; Toriel will be announcing lunch soon. You collect up the two plates (yours empty, his still holding the untouched slice of pie) and head for the door. “I should get in for lunch. But Undyne and I will see you later, yeah?” You say.

“Sure. Bye,” he grunts.

You lock the door behind you as you leave, and head back across the garden towards the house. _That went alright,_ you think. The offering of pie backfired, admittedly, but you got the impression Flowey was making an effort not to be outright malicious. And that’s certainly a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to Seventh Sanctum's Anime title generator.
> 
> https://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=animetitle


	4. Undyne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Undyne comes to do a security check.

You hear the microwave buzzing as you come back into the kitchen. You stick your head into the dining room to see Toriel setting the table.

“You were out there for quite a while, dear,” she says. “I was just about to call you in for lunch. Is everything alright with Flowey?”

“Yeah,” you say. “He’s being surprisingly decent today. Not polite, but not horrible either.”

“I see.”

“We watched the news for a bit. Did you hear about the new expansion deal?”

“Hm? Oh yes, I had it on in the background while I worked this morning.” She doesn’t elaborate. After a moment the microwave beeps, and she goes to open it. “I’m heating up the leftovers from yesterday’s dinner; there ought to be enough for lunch.”

“Cool.” You grab the nearly-empty water jug from the table and refill it at the kitchen sink while Toriel brings the food out.

“It’s going to be way easier to move people out of the underground now,” you resume. “I wonder how quickly they’ll be able to build on the new land.”

“Hmm, yes,” says Toriel. You get the feeling she wants to avoid the topic, but you can’t figure out why.

Lunch passes mostly in silence. Eventually Toriel asks “Do you have any more homework to do this weekend?”

“I finished the math this morning. I’ve still got part of my science project to do, though.”

“That’s the one about space, yes?”

“Yeah. I’ll get started on it this afternoon.” As an end-of-quarter project, everyone in your class has been given a different feature of space or the solar system to research. Your job is to read up on the sun and then do a presentation about it on Friday, but you’ve been sort of putting it off. You have nothing against space; it’s just that you don’t really like presenting to groups.

“Try not to worry about the actual presentation,” says Toriel, apparently reading your mind. “As long as you have all your facts right, that’ll be good enough for Miss Baxter.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m looking forward to it being over, though.”

“Be careful not to wish your life away, Frisk. But yes, once it’s over it’ll be Spring break, and you can relax."

Just as you finish eating, you hear the whirr of a motorbike engine approaching the house.

“It’s Undyne. I’ll get it!” you say. You run through to the hall and open the door just as the doorbell rings.

“Hi, Frisk! That was quick.”

“I heard you arriving.”

“Oh yeah, that makes sense.” Undyne comes through into the hall, her black biking outfit at odds with the warm tones of the interior. She has a dark blue kit bag slung over one shoulder, and holds her helmet in the opposite hand. “Hi, Toriel!” she says as Toriel joins you in the hallway.

“Good afternoon, Undyne. Would you like anything to drink? Tea, coffee...”

“Tea would be great, thanks Tor. Is it alright if I leave my gear in the hall?” Undyne gestures with her kit bag. “I’m running some water polo classes at the gym today, so I’ll have to go straight on from here.”

“That’s fine. Just hang it next to the coats. I’ll put the tea on – would you like a slice of pie as well?”

“Hmm.” Undyne checks her watch. “Sure, why not? I’ve got time.”

“Oh, um, there’s a slice already cut in the fridge,” you say as you follow Toriel back into the kitchen. “Flowey didn’t want it.”

“I see. Well, I’ll have that one, and cut another for Undyne. Do you want some, too?”

“No thanks. I’ll have some tea though, if that’s alright.”

“Of course.”

After a few minutes, the tea is served and you’re all seated around the dining table. “So, how are things with you and Alphys?” Toriel asks Undyne.

“Pretty good. Alphys has been way better since she started work at the YC3.” That’s the Yellow Creek Community College. “She comes back from the lab with some new robotics breakthrough, like, once a week. I’m hoping we can go on a vacation during her Spring break, now that we’re allowed to travel anywhere in the country. But I might not be able to drag her away from her work for long enough.”

“Well, it’s good to know she’s bouncing back, at any rate. I have to admit feel rather bad about my response to the, uh, mishaps that occurred when she was the royal scientist...”

“Nah, I don’t think you need to apologise for that. She told me she never really enjoyed that job – it was way outside her area of expertise. The only reason she hadn’t resigned already was because she felt she’d gone too far to give up. She really blamed herself for not being able to figure out how to destroy the barrier. It was just a bad situation all round.”

“I certainly can’t argue with that. And how about you? What are you up to these days?”

“Various things. I’m trying to learn to cook again. But like, properly this time, instead of just setting my kitchen on fire.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, there was a moment about a month ago when Alphys and I realised we were eating more pizza and ramen than, y’know, actual regular food. She at least had the excuse of being a busy academic, but I decided to get my act together and actually become competent in the kitchen. Speaking of which, this pie is honestly amazing.”

“Oh, thank you so much! I can copy out the recipe for you, if you’d like?”

Undyne’s eye lights up. “For real? That’d be great.”

“In fact, I have plenty of old recipe books that I don’t use these days, if you want them.”

“I don’t have anything to carry them in today, but I can swing by sometime next week to get them if that’s okay?”

“Certainly. Just ring to let me know when you’re coming.”

“Great.” Undyne hastily shovels the rest of the pie into her mouth. “Well, I should probably get on with my inspection. But thank you very much for your hospitality.”

“Oh, you’re welcome, dear,” says Toriel. “I’ll get that recipe written up while you’re outside.”

You get up and lead Undyne through the kitchen towards the back door. “So, how’s the freaky flower doing?” she asks.

“He’s alright. He’s in the greenhouse.” You head out into the garden, collecting the key from its peg on your way out.

“Good to keep the key stored away from the greenhouse,” says Undyne. “But I’d advise you to leave it in a locked drawer or a safe. If someone wanted to break this guy out, leaving the key out in the open would make it easy for them. This isn’t an especially secure building.”

That seems like overkill, but you decide not to argue. “Okay.”

Undyne stops at the door to the greenhouse and eyes it over; her gaze fixes on the window that you opened to thread the TV’s extension cable through. “What’s that power line for?”

“The TV.”

“Ri-ight. And do you leave that window open when the flower’s unsupervised?”

“Um,” you say. “Yeah?”

Undyne starts to say something, and cuts herself off. She takes a deep breath. “You understand how dangerous that is, right kid?”

“Not really. He can’t move himself off the table, and even if he could the window’s too high for him to reach.” The window in question is wider than it is tall, and its hinges are set into the edge where the wall meets the ceiling, almost like a skylight. “Plus there’s a chain on it, so it only opens like an inch.”

“A chain’s not indestructible. And just because he hasn’t moved doesn’t mean he can’t. He could summon vines out of the ground and lift himself up to the window. Even with the chain in place he could probably squeeze through.”

“Oh. Uh,” you say, trying to think of an argument.

“Show me the inside,” commands Undyne.

Flowey is stony silent as you enter the greenhouse, but at least he didn’t do a repeat performance of his vanishing act. You would not like to see Undyne’s reaction to that.

Undyne doesn’t seem to acknowledge Flowey, instead bending down to inspect the metal grates over the floor. She gives each panel a methodical tug to check they’re all secure, and then casts an eye over the furniture.

“Hmm... right.” She paces around the greenhouse, checking the chains on each window and typing on the tablet from time to time. She rifles through the cardboard boxes of books, as if expecting to find some kind of contraband inside. You look on, surprised by how methodical she’s being. After a couple of minutes, even Flowey can’t help watching her in trepidation.

Eventually she seems satisfied with her inspection, and takes a seat. “Okay, uh... Flowey.” You hear a shadow of amusement in her voice as she says his name. “The King wants me to ask you if you...” she reads from her tablet “...feel safe and comfortable in the greenhouse, or would like any other accommodations, furnishings, et cetera – within reason.”

Flowey snorts derisively. “Cute. If I say I’m miserable and terrified, will you let me out?”

Undyne sighs. “I guess I’ll just say that you’re fine.”

“Hang on, there is one thing,” says Flowey. “I used to be able to make vines come out of the ground, but I can’t do that in here. I think it only works if I have enough earth to grow them out of. So, like, maybe I could get a bigger pot? Like one of those rectangular ones?”

Undyne holds eye contact with Flowey as he talks, like she’s trying to read his mind. You’re surprised to see that he looks as nervous as you feel; the usual slouch in his stem is gone, and the bravado is slowly receding from his voice.

“What do you need to make vines for?” Undyne asks.

“They’re good for picking stuff up. I’d be able to hold books with them. All I can do right now is watch TV.”

“Uh-huh.” Undyne makes some more notes. “I imagine they’d also be handy for moving yourself around, opening windows, that kind of thing?”

“I... I guess?”

“Or for pulling up the grates over the floor? Then it would be easy to escape.”

“I – what?”

You decide to step in. “Undyne, that’s not fair. You asked if he wanted anything else, and he gave you an answer.”

Her expression softens ever so slightly. “Alright. I’ll see if we can figure something out. But the safety of this town comes before your convenience, Flowey, so don’t get your hopes up. Frisk and Toriel are already doing you a good turn by letting you stay here. You need to appreciate that.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Flowey adjusts back into what you call Sullen Mode. Any sign that he was nervous of flustered is gone.

“Well, that’s everything then,” says Undyne. She stands up and flicks the screen cover back over her tablet. “Frisk, a word outside?”

“Okay,” you say.

You lock up the greenhouse on your way out, and follow Undyne back up the garden, out of Flowey’s earshot. You open your mouth to speak, but she cuts you off.

“I know you think I’m being too harsh on him, Frisk. You want to see the best in him. But I need you to understand the situation from everyone else’s point of view, as well.”

“What do you mean?”

“When people hurt you, you take it as a challenge to make friends with them. That strategy worked on me, so I can’t fault you for it. But Flowey is seriously dangerous – he almost killed you and me, and a bunch of other people _including King Asgore_ , for no clear reason. Maybe he’s not irredeemable, but he is still technically a criminal, and a slippery one at that. So we need to take the normal precautions with him, even if that means hurting his feelings.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to twist his words to make it sound like he’s planning a breakout,” you counter, raising your voice slightly. Her attitude is starting to get on your nerves.

Undyne, meanwhile, keeps her voice level. “I thought his request sounded suspicious, so I pressed him to see how he responded. That’s a standard interrogation technique. If it’s any consolation, it seemed like he really hadn’t considered using vines to escape, meaning that request was probably genuine. But we can’t afford to let our guard down. Trust me on that.”

“Okay. So are there any other precautions you want to add?”

“Let’s see...” she skims back over her notes. “So, the extension cable for the TV. As long as the window’s open to let it in, it provides a possible exit. Now, according to him he can’t grow any vines to reach up there, and there is still the chain which limits how far the window can go, but we can’t take anything for granted. If that window’s going to stay open all the time, there should be an extra padlock on it, keeping the entrance just wide enough that the cable can fit through.”

“Right.”

“Also: the window chains were chosen to withstand the force we think Flowey can put on them, but once the windows are open we also need to consider external threats. With the right tools, an outside agent might be able to bust them, even if Flowey can’t. So I’d recommend a burglar alarm on that window as an additional measure, if it’s going to stay open when nobody’s around.”

You’ve tried to stay on-board with Undyne so far, but now she’s starting to sound paranoid. “Who would want to break Flowey out? Hardly anybody even knows he exists.”

“When you’re dealing with dangerous individuals, you have to be prepared for anything, Frisk. It’s Royal Guard training. Even if a security measure seems irrelevant, you never skip it. The last time I let myself get complacent, I was lucky to only lose an eye.”

“Mm.” You get where she’s coming from, but all the same you’re not convinced.

Undune picks up on your tone. “Okay, consider this: Asgore, myself and several other monsters know that this Flowey guy is secured here in your garden. We know that he’s violent and opportunistic, and also a decent manipulator – he convinced Papyrus to trust him back in the underground, if you remember. Granted, Papyrus isn’t the most cautious guy, but still. Let’s say someone who knows all that information accidentally reveals it to someone else who could take advantage of it. For example a human who watched the news this morning, and didn’t like what they saw. A human who’d be willing to set a dangerous monster loose to make us look bad.”

Undyne gives you a moment to consider this. There’s no denying that, from that perspective, the whole situation suddenly looks very different.

“So he gets out and kills some humans,” Undyne continues. “And now Asgore has to explain to their families and their government why he left a known criminal in the custody of two civilians. And every human in the country is going to wonder if there’s more monsters like him that we’re not telling them about.”

You have to admit, you don’t have an answer for that. You stare at the ground bashfully. “I hadn’t thought about it that way. Sorry, Undyne.”

She sighs. “Eh, don’t worry about it, kiddo. You’re the one who’s gotta babysit this guy. I know you’re only trying to make the whole thing bearable for him and you.” She adjusts her eyepatch slightly. “Truth is, I respect the King’s orders, Frisk, but if it were down to me I would much rather see Flowey put in a proper prison. I suppose Asgore is counting on your knack for declawing your enemies. If anyone can get through to that murderplant it’ll be you.” She gives you a light punch on the shoulder.

“So do you think he can change?” you ask.

“Maybe, maybe not,” says Undyne. “But when it comes to fixing bad people, you have to decide how much effort you’re going to put in. Draw a line in the sand, y’know?”

“Yeah, I get you.”

“Cool. Well, I should probably be on my way.”

You both go back through to the front door; Toriel comes with you to see Undyne off from the doorstep, a copy of the pie recipe in hand.

“Thanks for the tea, and the recipe, Toriel,” says Undyne. “I’ll type up my recommendations for the greenhouse and send them to you by the end of tomorrow.” She turns to you. “I’m sure there’s some way to safely give him a bigger container. I’ll mull it over and let you know if I think of anything.”

“Thanks. See you soon, then,” you say.

“Bye, Undyne,” says Toriel. “I hope the water polo goes well.”

“Cheers.” Undyne slings her bag over her shoulder, gets on her motorbike, and drives out of your driveway and out of sight.

*             *             *

You decide to go back and talk to Flowey before starting on your science project. You enter the greenhouse to find him hunched over, facing away from the door.

“Uh... hi, Flowey,” you begin. There’s no response.

“Um, sorry that Undyne was so harsh. I talked to her about it.” Still nothing.

You walk around the table to speak to his face. “She’s just looking out for the people she cares about, you know? She doesn’t hate you personally.”

As you walk, Flowey turns away so that he still has his back to you.

“And hey, it’s not like she knows about your past. If she did she’d understand. She’d probably treat you a lot better.”

He persists in his silence, and suddenly you’re angry. At him for being so miserable, at Undyne for being so cruel, at Undyne and Toriel for their pointless, well-intentioned lectures. When you next open your mouth, you hear yourself shouting.

“Fine, go ahead and ignore me, then! I’m the one person trying to help you, and you won’t even talk to me! If you told Toriel and Undyne who you really are, they’d help you too. If you made _any effort at all_ to improve yourself, or enjoy things, or just not be totally awful all the time, maybe everything would be better. But you won’t, and I know why. It’s because secretly you don’t want to get better. You just want to wallow in your own misery and drag everyone who tries to help down with you! If that’s how you want things to be, maybe I’ll stop wasting my time on you and do literally anything else!”

You march out of the greenhouse and slam the door behind you with a deeply satisfying _clang._ Back inside the house, you go to put the key on its peg, and then remember Undyne’s advice and stick it in the chest of drawers in the hall instead. It doesn’t have a lock, but at least it’s better than having it right by the door.

As your temper dies down, you start to feel the regret for what you just said. It was there even as you were shouting, but without the burst of anger to mask it you feel it much more keenly. You want to go back out and apologise, but you can’t quite face the prospect. You’re not even sure what you’d say.

And anyway, you’ve got a science project that you _really_ need to get started on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features a lot of what I'm dubbing "narrative cartilage" - scenes that I didn't have much inspiration for, but which need to be written so I can build on them later with the parts I really want to write. Given that, I'd be interested to know how it measures up in the eyes of the reader.


	5. Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frisk does some homework

You stare at the empty document in front of you. The caret blinks in a hypnotic rhythm, as if counting down the seconds left in the afternoon. With each blink, the script for your presentation obstinately continues refusing to write itself.

_Should you go and apologise to Flowey? You were pretty harsh..._

You decide to skip the introduction for now, and start by just collecting a bunch of information. You can always go back and add structure later. You open up the Wikipedia page for stars. “A luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its own gravity.” What the heck does that mean? Okay, focus. Luminous means it shines. Spheroid is like a sphere, so basically a ball. Plasma you’ve heard of, but don’t know what it is. You open its article in a new tab. Gravity... that’s what pulls things down to Earth, and you’re pretty sure it’s also what makes Earth go round the Sun. And it also holds the sun together? You open that article, too. It’s going to be tough not to get side-tracked.

_You were only being honest, though. He’s not even trying to get better..._

You read a bit about plasma, switching to your document from time to time to make notes. The article is full of bewildering sciencey words – you wonder if the authors made it as dense as possible just to show off. Nonetheless, you pretty soon get the idea that plasma’s basically the same thing as gas. You’ll settle for that.

You carry on browsing, and carry on finding tangents to go down. You lose a good fifteen minutes reading about astrology before realising that it doesn’t actually have anything to do with what you’re meant to be researching. Stay on-topic! You find some more stuff about the elements that make up stars, and add it to your notes. Hydrogen and helium... energy released through radiation... how much of this stuff are you meant to include? Are you going to have to give definitions for all these terms? After a bit more clicking you wind up on an article about nuclear fusion reactors. How did you even get here? Your eyes scan the page without taking in a single word. Fusion... does fusion happen in stars? You flick through the dozen tabs you have open, trying to track the connection between the disparate topics, but to no avail. Your brain feels hopelessly sluggish; instead of revealing a clear connection, the rapid switching between various pages and articles causes them to coalesce in your mind, merging into one incredibly dense wall of text, until every attempt you make at comprehension gets sucked in and absorbed immediately.

_But he still deserves a chance. And if you don’t give it to him, nobody else will..._

You type a few more sentences, barely cognizant of what you’re putting down at this point. As the light outside fails, the glow of your laptop screen starts making your eyes water. You can see the greenhouse from your window – the TV screen is illuminated, and contrasts harshly with the soft afternoon light. You drag your eyes back to your own screen, and the black hole of information you need to excavate...

*             *             *

Everything’s dark. You’re underground, but somewhere far away you hear rushing wind. Flowey is cowering in front of you, defeated, and waiting for you to deliver a killing blow.

Your turn. Mercy.

Flowey’s turn. After a moment of silence, he whimpers “...What are you doing? Do you really think I’ve learned anything from this? No.”

You should kill him. He’s been nothing but trouble since you first met him. He just murdered you violently a dozen times, and when you had a chance to leave the underground, he ruined it. He deserves to die.

Your turn. Mercy.

His turn. He tilts his head slightly to look at you. “Sparing me won’t change anything. Killing me is the only way to end this.”

You’ve done your best to follow Toriel’s advice so far. You didn’t always succeed – there were a few monsters that you ended up killing when sparing proved too difficult. But was that really so wrong? They attacked first; it’s not your fault they bit off more than they could chew. And not even Undyne was as brutal to you as Flowey’s been. So why are you hesitating?

Your turn. Mercy.

His turn. He straightens up and grins at you, mockery written all over his scarred face. “If you let me live... I’ll come back.”

What did you even achieve? You were practically perfect, you barely killed anyone, and yet here you are, with no hope of escaping the underground. If you’d just blasted through, obliterating everything in your path, and taken Asgore’s soul without hesitating, you’d be back on the surface by now. What good has nonviolence done you?

You feel like you’re being tested.

Your turn. Mercy.

His turn. “I’ll kill you.”

_You already did that,_ you think. _Get some better threats._

Your turn. Mercy.

His turn. “I’ll kill everyone.”

You can believe that.

Your turn. Mercy.

His turn. “I’ll kill everyone you love.”

His smile is even wider now. All of a sudden you decide you’ve had enough of his taunting and interference. Getting out of the underground will be much easier with him out of the picture. You’ll kill him here, and perhaps he’ll get the message and stay out of your hair after you reset.

Your turn. Fight.

You lunge and swipe downwards with the dagger, opening a wide gash in his face. He laughs, twisted glee evident on his broken visage.

“I knew you had it in you!”

His battered face melts away altogether, leaving behind a regular flower.

With his death comes an unpleasant pulse of doubt, but you quell it swiftly. You’re not going to waste any more time on being nice – you’ll reset, and this time you’ll do things properly. Anyone who gets in your way will die, and you’ll finally get out of the underground.

In the lucid state afforded by your newfound resolve, you become vaguely aware that you’ve been here before. As soon as that realisation hits, you remember everything that happened between then and now, and it immediately becomes obvious that this is another dream. And if this is a dream, that means –

“Honestly? That was pretty much the coolest thing you’ve ever done, Frisk,” says Chara.

Right on cue. Ugh.

“You again?” you answer.

“Like, you were a total badass! Flowey was annoying you, so you killed him. After that, I thought you were finally gonna wise up and stop being everyone’s punching bag.”

“Please go away.”

“And for a while it seemed like you did. You killed so many people that Sans actually got off his butt to try and stop you. But then you just... quit.”

“I changed my mind.”

“You’re trying to frame it like a moral choice. You gave up because you were bored, that’s all.”

“So you’re going to try and get me to reset again? And playing my memories back to me is somehow going to achieve that?”

“First of all,” says Chara, “you’re overestimating how much influence I have here. If killing him is where your thoughts were, that says a lot more about you than it does about me.”

“Ri-ight...” You’re not convinced.

“And second... well, I’ve changed my mind about that, actually. Don’t get your hopes up, I’m still gonna make you reset eventually. _But,_ this whole ‘trying-to-make-Flowey-a-better-person’ thing is more interesting to watch than I thought it would be.”

“Really? Just last night you were saying it was a lost cause.”

“Oh, no, it definitely is. But it’s shaping up to be the fun kind of lost cause. Like a car wreck, you know? Where you’re just waiting for it all to crash and burn. So I guess you could say I’m giving you an extension. I’m gonna let this whole mess play out, and when it goes sideways we can reset and go back to the original plan. How does that sound?”

“For the last time, I’m done resetting! I’m done letting you control me. And I’m done letting you into my dreams. Now go away.”

“Yeesh, fine, I’ll make myself scarce for now. Like I said, you’ll get to do things your way first; I’ll leave you be for as long as that takes. I’m sure it’ll be lots of fun, even when you fail. But when you do, you’ll welcome me back.”

*             *             *

“Frisk! Dinner!” Toriel’s call jerks you awake before you can answer. Disoriented, you almost fall out of your chair.

“Coming,” you reply in a whisper. Your mouth is uncomfortably dry. You try again. “Coming!”

“Alright. Best be quick, though, or it’ll get cold.”

You suppose you managed to fall asleep at the computer. The sun has set outside your window, and now the laptop screen is the only source of light in your room. You mash the keyboard to make the screensaver go away, and squint at your paltry page of notes. Frustratingly enough, it hasn’t expanded while you were napping.

You groan and heave yourself to your feet. Everything feels weird and unreal. Part of your brain thinks it should be mid-afternoon like when you fell asleep, while another part thinks that, since it’s just woken up, it must be morning. No part of it thinks it’s time for dinner. It’s a similar feeling to loading or resetting – suddenly finding yourself at a different time of day to the one you were just in. But it’s worse above ground, where the position of the sun immediately reinforces the discrepancy.

You slouch through to the dining room and chug an entire glass of water before even sitting down at your place. Toriel notices.

“Are you feeling well, Frisk?”

“I’m good. I just, uh, fell asleep by accident.”

“Poor thing. It’s stress from talking to that awful flower, that’s what. Try and eat a bit. And remember, you don’t have to spend time looking after him if you don’t wish to.”

“Sure.” You take a bite of pasta. It’s delicious as usual. “Mm. This is good.”

“Thank you, dear.”

Everything about the meal feels safe and comfortable. The occasional gust of wind whistles eerily outside, but within the walls the air is still. The old-fashioned halogen light combined with the bright yellow wallpaper gives the room a homely glow, and the quiet crackling of the fire makes for pleasant background noise.

When the first monsters reached Yellow Creek, it felt like your whole world was on the brink of collapse. Asgore and the other monsters you’d befriended had had to work themselves to the bone to keep their interaction with humanity from going pear-shaped. In the first few weeks everybody seemed intent on keeping you away from the action and not letting you know what was going on. Their intent was to keep you safe, but your imagination had jumped at the chance to predict the worst. Would the government punish you for helping the monsters escape? Would there be another war? Would they take you away from Toriel? Would you be alone again?

Somehow you’d been allowed to stay with Toriel. You remember the day she gave you the news, and brought you to your new house on the outskirts of town, as the first time you believed everything might turn out okay. The collective stress and anxiety took a long time to abate, but at least within the house you felt safe. Toriel listened to your fears, made sure you went to school, gave you regular meals. Your life finally became somewhat normal.

But now, the steady routine that kept you sane feels almost dull. It’s not that you don’t love Toriel, but aside from schoolwork and the weather, there’s not much to talk to her about. Meals these days pass in near silence, and then you go your separate ways. Tonight is no exception; you finish your food and help take the dishes back into the kitchen, and then return to your room while Toriel sits by the fire doing needlework.

Was Flowey right about her? If what he said is true, she’ll she lose interest in you if you become too independent, and find another child to lavish with attention. You can’t see that happening any time soon – if anything, it’s you who finds her to be a bit overbearing. It’s hard to imagine that she would ever be neglectful, even by accident. What did she do for Flowey to see her the way he does now? He must have just been making things up to get under your skin. Then again, six children had gone into the underground and met her before you did, and she somehow let all of them die by Asgore’s hand. Why didn’t she stop him sooner? Why were you the one she came out of exile to protect?

You consider spending a bit more time on your science project, but you already know you won’t get anything more done tonight, even if you try. You shut down your laptop, then sprawl on your bed and stare at the ceiling. As mean-spirited and difficult as Flowey is, there might be some truth to what he says at times. Having absolutely no moral compass probably lets him voice thoughts that most people would keep to themselves. Perhaps tomorrow you'll see if you can get him to talk about his past a bit.

Despite your impromptu nap, or maybe because of it, you’re incredibly sleepy – by the time you’ve gotten yourself ready for bed you can barely stay upright. A bluish glare outside the window catches your eye – looking towards the greenhouse you can see that the TV is still on, though you can’t make out what Flowey is watching. You sigh and draw the curtains, shutting out the last remaining light, and then collapse into bed where you sink into a deep and, thankfully, dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to devlman127 and Dragonsrule18. Thank you for commenting on my previous chapters! I'll try not to keep you waiting this long again.


	6. School

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frisk returns to the daily grind, and learns a bit about what it's like to grow up underground.

Your alarm wakes you up at 8 AM. It’s Monday morning, meaning you officially have four days left to finish your project. You do your best to quell your panic while you get ready for school. After getting dressed, having breakfast and cleaning your teeth, you’re left with five minutes to spare before you have to set off. You decide to use the time to give Flowey a quick visit and some water – you retrieve the key from its drawer, fill a glass with water from the kitchen tap, and head outside. The sky is clear but there’s still a residual chill in the air that the sun hasn’t yet dispelled.

The door rattles as you put the key in, and you see Flowey emerge from his soil, alerted to your arrival by the sound. You’re surprised when the key refuses to turn; you shake the door a bit and then give an extra hard twist, but the lock won’t budge. Bewildered, you turn the handle, and the door opens easily. Flowey sits on his table, looking on with a haughty expression.

“You forgot to lock it when you left yesterday,” he says.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid!_ Your stomach twists, and it takes a lot of effort to conceal your embarrassment. “Evidently.”

There’s an uncomfortable pause. Uncomfortable for you, at least; Flowey seems to be enjoying it. You gesture clumsily with the glass. “I, uh, got you some water.”

“Cool.”

You pour it evenly across the soil. “Is that enough, or shall I –”

“No, that’s plenty.”

“Right.” You put the glass down. “Hey, um, if Toriel or Undyne visit, can you, like... not mention that I left your door unlocked overnight?”

He puts on a pensive expression. “I really _should_ tell Undyne, shouldn’t I?  I’m unstable, after all; it’s for my own best interests that I’m locked up.” You realise he’s going to milk this opportunity for all its worth, and try to keep your face blank – he’ll go harder if he knows he’s getting to you.

“I mean, I assume you’d have made yourself scarce by now if that lock was the only thing stopping you,” you rationalise. “That’s why we have the table and the grate.”

“Maybe, maybe. But why would I want to escape when messing with you is so fun? I could be biding my time. Passing up an opportunity so that you start to trust me, and let your guard down. Then it’ll _really_ hurt when I finally do escape. It’ll be like a betrayal. Theoretically, of course.”

“Well, I’m definitely remembering to lock the door today. What if last night was your only chance? You clearly hate this place; I don’t believe you’d pass up that opportunity.” You definitely _want_ to believe that’s the case. You’d never live it down if you’d really left Flowey an opening to escape all night.

“It didn’t even take you a full day to make a mistake. I’m sure it’ll happen again. Even if it doesn’t, the fact that it happened _once_ is some great leverage. Undyne already doubts you’re up to the job; she’d _freak_ if I told her. She’d probably confiscate me and put me in a proper prison, and then you wouldn’t be able to talk to me anymore. And let’s not even get started on how disappointed Toriel would be.”

This is starting to get genuinely upsetting, but you’re determined not to let him goad you into losing your temper two conversations in a row. “Sounds like you’re itching to tell her already, maybe I should save you some grief and just own up myself?”

“Nah, my lips are sealed, at least for now.” His face switches from malice to innocence in a flash.

“Riiight. Well, I’d better be off to school now. Stay out of trouble, okay.”

“Of course.” He winks.

You leave, locking the door and giving it a tug to make sure it’s secure. (Unlocked all night! Honestly, what a stupid thing to do). As you head through to the front of the house, you try to make sense of Flowey’s mind games. Did he really choose to stay, just so he could torment you over it? No, he has to be bluffing. And it wouldn’t make any sense for him to rat you out to Undyne, either. Even for an emotionless husk, a greenhouse with a TV and fresh air has to be more pleasant than whatever alternative she’d choose. You reassure yourself that the whole thing was an insignificant lapse, and that there will be no consequences as long as you play your cards right. It might even be a good thing; you won’t soon make that mistake again after this scare.

You grab your school bag from the hall and head out into the driveway, where Toriel is waiting by the car. As the initial shock of your screw-up subsides, the low-level anxiety of your looming science project deadline re-emerges. Four days really isn’t a lot of time. You’re going to have to work fast, and you can’t really afford to distract yourself with hypothetical escape scenarios.

*             *             *

The school day passes without much incident. In your first lesson, Miss Baxter reminds everyone that they should be well on the way to completing their projects by now, and that presentations will take place on Friday morning. You try to gauge from the other kids’ responses how far behind you are compared to them, but half the class doesn’t even seem to be listening. The room has that unique atmosphere generated by the sluggishness of a Monday morning clashing against the excitement of the final week before Spring break. For some, the imminent vacation lessens their usual resentment at having to be in school so early; for others it exacerbates it.

You get back a math assignment from last week with a perfectly adequate mark attached, and perpetuate the cycle of toil by handing in your fractions homework. In English, you’re given a book extract to read and a set of comprehension questions to answer – you blast through them with ease and spend the rest of the lesson surreptitiously reading other extracts in the virtual textbook. In the afternoon you have music, a lesson you generally look forward to as an opportunity to sequester yourself in a side-room with a keyboard and play around with the settings for forty minutes. You sort of wish you could really play – Toriel did give you a couple of lessons once, fairly soon after you moved in, but you didn’t stick at it and now you’d feel weird about asking again.

After the last lesson ends, you head to the school’s main gate as quickly as possible to wait for Toriel. Since she’s a teacher herself, you have to wait a little while for her to finish up before she can take you home. You wait in a state of agitation, knowing every minute spent here is one less to work on your project. But she does show up soon enough, complete with an armload of paperwork to keep her busy for the evening.

You grab your laptop as soon as you get home, determined not to let any of the afternoon go to waste. Rather than working in your room, you head out to the greenhouse again; you can see that Flowey is watching TV again, and you figure recruiting him as a test audience will provide a welcome change. And you’d probably be hard pressed to find a more honest critic than a bored, understimulated kid with no moral compass.

“Have you been watching that thing all day?” you ask as you let yourself in.

“No.” Flowey avoids eye contact.

“Are you sure...?”

“Okay, yeah, but it’s not like there’s anything else to do. Now, if I had my vines...”

“I know, I know. But that’s not happening until we get the green light from Undyne. Anyway, I’ve got some new entertainment worked out for you today.”

“Really?” He toes the line between sarcasm and genuine curiosity.

“Yeah. I was thinking you could help me with this school proj-”

“Hard pass.”

“I haven’t even told you what it’s about yet!”

“I don’t care. It’s bad enough you’re keeping me locked up, and now you want to make me do your schoolwork?”

“It’s got to beat sitting by yourself watching,” you glance at the TV and read the caption, “a marathon of early 21st-century superhero movies. You realise you’ve already had more TV time today than most kids get in a week?”

"Why don’t you forget the project and join me? They made hundreds of these things back in the day."

"I can’t just not do my project."

"Sure you can! Nothing bad'll happen."

"Miss Baxter will be mad."

"Yeah, but like, so what? Who cares what some teacher thinks."

"She'll make me re-do it."

"Then just do it really badly until she gives up trying. That's how Chara got out of projects they didn't want to do."

"But, but... I'll feel bad."

"Ugh. Feelings. What good did feelings ever do anyone? I can't believe that infinite realities are open to you, and you're choosing to do homework because of _feelings_. What’s this project about, anyway?”

"Space. Specifically, stars."

"Stars, huh. Well, I can't help you there. We didn't have stars in the underground. We just made pretend with the glowing rocks in Waterfall."

"I remember. You used them to make wishes, right?"

"Some monsters did. It's a stupid tradition though. Rocks don't make wishes come true."

You don’t have anything to say to that, so Flowey continues.

"I'm going to be honest, stars are one of the more disappointing things about the surface so far."

"What do you mean?"

"Whenever we visited Waterfall, Asgore and Toriel wouldn't shut up about how much they missed the stars from above ground. They made them sound like some spectacular out-of-this-world light show. But I checked them out last night, and honestly? Not that impressive.”

“Do you find anything impressive, though?”

“Ha ha. Really though, they’re just little shiny dots. They’re like the Waterfall rocks, but smaller and worse.”

Flowey has an amazing knack for directing the flow of a conversation into a pit of miserable cynicism. You sit down at the table, opening your laptop, and soldier on with [in?] describing your project.

“Impressive or not, I need to have five minutes of material about them ready to present by Friday. Let me just read you what I’ve got so far?”

“Fiiiine. I just hit an ad break, anyway.”

“Okay. So, I’m going to start with by just saying what stars are. So I’ve written that they’re balls of burning gas out in space, and much bigger than planets. And that the closest star to us is the sun, and it’s ninety-“

Flowey chuckles incredulously. “The sun’s not a star!”

“It – what? Yes it is.”

“Stars are tiny and come out at night. The sun’s huge, and yellow, and comes out in the day. How is it a star?”

“It’s... you’re messing with me, right?”

“No! _You’re_ the one messing with _me._ ”

You take a moment to deal with the fact that Flowey doesn’t know that the sun, _the sun_ , is a star. Then you talk more calmly. “It’s because the sun is way closer than any of the others. So it looks bigger.”

“Okay, but that doesn’t explain why it’s the only one out during the day. Where do the others go?”

“Uh... I guess I never really thought about that...”

“How close is it, anyway? It looks to be pretty far up in the sky.”

“I was getting to that. According to Wikipedia, it’s ninety-three million miles away.”

Now Flowey laughs outright. “Okay, I’ll admit. You had me going there. But ninety-three million miles? As if! It’s clearly a couple of miles off the ground at most.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s obvious! I mean, even for big things, they get smaller when they’re far away. And, yeah, the sun is big, I guess, but if it was ninety-five –”

“Ninety-three.”

“Whatever, ninety-three million miles away... that’s just too big. There just can’t be that much space!”

He’s getting pretty worked up, so you choose your words carefully to try and avert a tantrum. “I’m just telling you what I read online. It could be wrong. But the sun _is_ pretty big.” You quickly Google its size. “Says here it’s 1.3 million times the size of the Earth. So that’s why it looks like a kind of... regular size I guess? It’s just super huge, but also super far away.”

“Let me see,” he snarls, twisting as if to grab hold of the laptop. You turn it around so he can see the screen.

As his eyes skim the page, you think Flowey’s brain may have been broken by this information. His head is turned downwards, his brow furrowed. After a moment, he speaks tentatively, as though afraid of what he’s going to hear. “And you said the sun is... the closest star?”

“Uh-huh. The next closest one is called,” you turn the laptop back round and scroll down. “Alpha Centauri. And it’s 4.2 light-years away from Earth.”

“Light-years?” His voice is subtly different, lacking the sarcastic tone that suffuses his every sentence to the point that you don’t register it until it’s gone.

“Yeah. It’s another measurement of distance.” you check a conversion table you downloaded yesterday. “One light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.”

“Trillion...” he says, in an awed tone.

You quickly count the zeroes. “Yeah. Five times a million times a million.” You offer him the screen again. “A lot further than the sun.”

This leaves him quiet for a good ten seconds. The only sound in the greenhouse is the TV, playing a car commercial on low volume.

He seems to abandon his attempt to wrap his head around the distances you’re describing. “Okay, Frisk. I’m still pretty sure you’re pulling my leg, which is quite the accomplishment considering I don’t have any. But it’s your project, so whatever.”

Your better judgement screams that you shouldn’t push the matter, but your curiosity gets the better of you. “I have to ask, didn’t you learn about this stuff when you were in school? Like, planets or whatever.”

“It was a hundred years ago. And the only information we had on the outside world came from things that fell into Waterfall from the surface, so what we knew was out of date, even at the time.”

“Oh.”

“And it’s not like outer space is the top priority when you’re all trapped underground, is it? Our science classes focused on things we could actually look at.”

"So what was school like in the underground? Do Princes go to school like everyone else?"

"Of course not! No self-respecting monster Prince would ever be caught mixing with commoners." He laughs at your shocked look. "God, I was kidding. Yeah. The underground's population wasn't that big so there were only a few different schools. Chara and I went to one in the capital."

You try another leading question. "So what kinds of things _did_ you learn in science?"

"A mix of stuff. Like, how plants grow underground, how our cave systems formed. When it came to the techy stuff, it mostly involved studying whatever junk happened to fall down from the human world." He chuckles, as if he just remembered something funny. "Chara thought it was hilarious how old our technology was. We thought home video was cutting-edge in 2015."

"Was it not?" You know technology was progressing fast back then, but you're hazy on the details.

"No. We had a huge camera that recorded onto tape, and then you put the tape in this VCR thing to play it. Actually, you've seen those tapes, haven't you? In Alphys's lab?"

"Oh yeah, I know the ones."

"So yeah, for us it was the latest thing, but nobody on the surface had a camera like that by 2015. Chara said people just used their phones to take video. I didn't get what they meant until..."

Flowey pauses, and you glance at him. He's looking at you, but his eyes aren't focused. It's as if he sees something you don't. You clear your throat. "You were saying?"

"Yeah, uh... Yeah. Phone cameras." He shakes his head. "Let's talk about something else."

"Okay," you say. You have no idea what just happened, but Flowey seemed genuinely unsettled just then. Is that an improvement on Grumpy Flowey? You're not sure. “So, anyway, the sun is ninety-three million miles away. It’s made of gas, mainly hydrogen and helium, and is 5,500 degrees Celsius on the surface. Uh,” you glance over your notes. “It’s got nine planets orbiting it, and Earth is the fourth one out. The furthest one, Hecate, was discovered in 2055. There used to be one called Pluto, but they decided it wasn’t a planet in 2006.”

“Who’s ‘they?’”

“Um... scientists?”

“Like, all scientists? They all got up and said ‘Let’s make Pluto not a planet any more?’”

“I mean –”

“You should say who actually decided that, otherwise it just sounds lazy. Miss Barnett will be all like, ‘did you even read the –’”

“Okay, yeah, I’ll change it.”

“The planet stuff is good though. If you stick on a few of them for a while you can really pad out your time.”

“It is meant to be about stars, though. I’m pretty a couple of other people got assigned specific planets? I don’t want to steal someone else’s topic.”

“Boo-hoo. You want advice, don’t you? When you have a set amount of time you need to talk for, fill it up with random garbage. That’s presentation basics.”

“I don’t want my presentation to be garbage,” you say hotly.

“Well, maybe you came to the wrong houseplant, then. Garbage is my life, frisk. It’s what I do. it’s who I am.”

“Even if that’s true, there’s already been one useful thing in your garbage advice so far.” You quickly look up the history of Pluto’s planet status, and add the International Astronomical Union to your note on it. “So you know what, keep it coming. You pour out the garbage, I’ll pick the bits I like.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“So next I have a bit about how the sun provides heat for the planet, and energy to plants so they can photosynthesize and make food. And then they’re food for animals, so all life depends on the sun really.”

“So I’m animal food. I love it!”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“So the sun is a yellow dwarf star, and is a pretty average size. There’s some that are way bigger –”

“You’re jumping all over the place. You were talking about photosynthesis and then you went back to the sun itself, and now other stars.”

“This is just the raw info. I haven’t organised it yet.”

“Well, you should,” he rejoins, before turning back to the TV where the ad break has just finished.

“Yeah, yeah.” You cut and paste the yellow dwarf bit back up to where the other parts are. Reckoning you have enough to start actually making the presentation now, you open a fresh slideshow and pick out a suitably celestial colour scheme. “Does this look alright?”

“Whuh?” Says Flowey. “Oh. Yeah, looks swell.”

“You didn’t even look!”

“The movie’s back on. This was fun though. We should do it again sometime.” With that, he returns his focus to the screen, where a gang of colourfully clad humans are taking turns punching a huge purple guy in armour. It’s like the channel just changed inside his head, going from engaged and critical to utterly uninterested with the flick of a switch.

“Unbelievable,” you mutter. Flowey pays you no attention. You stay another couple of minutes, adding to your slides and occasionally musing aloud on their content to try and entice him into commenting. But you draw no response, and it’s not long before the grunts and explosions of the fantastical battle prove too distracting. You leave the greenhouse with a cursory “bye,” lock up, and head to your room to carry on working.

By sundown, you find that contrary to your fears, you’ve collected more information than you know what to do with. You read it back to yourself under your breath and find it comes in at about six minutes. But although you’ve reached the length requirement, you don’t feel good about what you’ve produced. Going through it from start to finish makes it clear how much of a mess it is structurally. Even after trying to follow Flowey’s advice, you still find yourself zig-zagging between different topics and getting side-tracked by subjects that have no real relevance, but are too fascinating for you to discard in good conscience. You try to focus: group all the snippets into proper sections, and trim out the garbage. But _everything_ feels interconnected, _everything_ seems important. Why can’t your brain disentangle it? Why does it have to be so difficult?

And there’s another problem, one that editing can’t fix. Your presentation is boring. No matter how interesting you find the information, when you stand behind your chair and pretend to deliver it in front of a class it feels flat and lifeless, like you’re reading a shopping list. And deep down, you know that the problem is you. You can’t make things sound interesting just by the tone of your voice, the way Miss Baxter does. You can’t hold a group’s attention like the rest of your classmates can. And you know that no matter how much you polish and refine your presentation, as long as it lacks that spark it will only ever be okay, and never great. It’s hard to work under that knowledge.

You’re suddenly too dejected to keep working, and distract yourself by pondering your progress with Flowey. Even his brief and reluctant help with the project was more than you had expected; you were lucky to come in during an ad break. You think it did him good, though, even if he’d never admit it. On reflection, one moment stands out to you: the way he completely lost his train of thought when he was talking about cell phones. You have no idea where that came from or what it meant, and he was very eager to change the subject. It almost seems disconcerting by design, like he wanted to psyche you out? But your gut instinct says he wasn’t performing at that moment.

The call to dinner cuts off your train of thought. You shut down your laptop, being sure to save everything first, and close it sharply as if trying to trap all the stress and uncertainty of the day inside. There’s no reason for you to let some dumb project stop you enjoying a perfectly good meal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It looks like I kept my promise of a shorter wait for this chapter, even if it did take more than a month to get it posted! I suffered some major writer's block on this one, and it needed more revisions and edits than any of the others so far. I think the next few will be easier by comparison, but then again I always say that. Nonetheless, rest assured that this story has not been abandoned. It may take a long time, but I'm determined to see it through.
> 
> As always, I welcome any and all feedback. Thank you for your patience and your attention.


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